7 votes

The Proverbial Pen #3

Today is day three of my "war against writer's block"!
As I keep fighting with my proverbial pen, I hope that some day I'll be able to get out of my block and be able to write some real stuff like research paper or novel or story book.

What I realized today is that Word Power is a very important skill. A writer is essentially a Wordsmith or someone who carves and arranges the words and phrases into sentences, just as a sculptor or carpenter would do with wood or other raw materials. To be a better writer, you must learn to fall in love with words which is probably easier said than done - especially for us non-native speakers!

Having a regular habit or routine helps with this. Each time you come across a difficult word, you open the dictionary software or app and learn its meaning. It hardly takes a few minutes but it's a very useful skill as each new word you know of acts like a raw material or building block for your writing. Better still, develop linguistics as a hobby as mastery of grammar is equally important and so is learning about how languages, cultures and people basically work and interact at the core.

Apart from that, noting down right ideas as they come is also very important. For example, the idea about the Wordsmith thing occurred to me yesterday when I was having a cup of tea. I noted it on time (before it could vanish into the depths of that dark matter called subconscious mind and become irretrievable again!), and made a note of that on my computer so that I can write it in today's proverbial pen.

Even after having these basic tools and ingredients, you may not be able to write anything at all if you lack that focused energy or passion to write about a particular topic - be it a research paper, novel, story book or something else. You need to have that energy to write which I feel I'm lacking right now. I might be able to feel that energy some day as I continue with my battles, at least I hope so! Thanks for reading this and staying with me in these challenging times.

1 comment

  1. Grendel
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    I have no credibility as a writer, but I also come from tech (software dev/cyber security) and have tried to write a novel. I'm over 50% complete with the text of the first draft, which is a lot...

    I have no credibility as a writer, but I also come from tech (software dev/cyber security) and have tried to write a novel. I'm over 50% complete with the text of the first draft, which is a lot considering how far I get in most projects in my personal life.

    What made things click for me was realizing that writing can be done via day dreaming. The important scenes in my story, the plot points and character growth moments all happened when was day dreaming, not when I sat down to actually "put pen to paper"

    Everyone's different and I have no idea if that helps, but whatever you do don't quite! Take the breaks that recharge you but don't give up on writing.

    4 votes